Daily Edition

Terrorist attack not reported on CCTV

Blast comes four days before start of Olympics

BEIJING -- Four days before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the nightly news on host broadcaster China Central Television did not report the worst terrorist attack in the country since the early 1990s.

The details of Monday's attack by two minority Uighurs in Kashgar -- 2,100 miles from Beijing -- were reported by the official Xinhua news agency.

Xinhua said that the men, age 28 and 33, used a dump truck, knives and homemade explosives to kill 16 military police in an early morning ambush. The details of the report were not independently verifiable.

Security in Beijing was tight as tens of thousands of athletes, sports fans, businesspeople and journalists arrived ahead of the 17-day Games that begin Friday.

Investigators pointed at a Uighur Muslim separatist movement as the force behind the two attackers, both of whom were arrested, the People's Daily Web site reported.

Last month, vice minister of public security Yang Huanning predicted the Olympics will be a target for anti-China and hostile forces trying to sabotage the event.